The difficulty I want

I got on a treadmill at the gym all ready to workout when it asked me a question I didn't know the answer to: "Difficulty Level?". I stared at the screen, which gave me no range, and to boot I had never run on a treadmill with an incline before. So I guessed 10. Turns out I think it was out of 10. Fortunately I didn't need to be Carl Lewis, when I realized things were getting way too hard, I just adjusted the difficulty down to 8 (ok 3). The point is, sometimes you don't know how difficult you want it to be until you've tried it.

So why don't we do this more in games? Many games ask you to choose a difficulty level up front, but don't allow you to adjust it later on when you realize you were wrong. Giving players access to Level of Difficulty settings throughout the game can not only help prevent them from being frustrated and putting the controller down, but also allow them to change the way in which they perceive and play the game.

I was playing "God of War" last week, a game I had always meant to play, but had avoided because it seemed like a hack and slash platformer, which is a genre that I've never been incredibly fond of (In case you're wondering, it turned out to be a hack and slash plat former). While playing it, I found myself enjoying the game quite a bit, though there were definitely moments of annoyance when I was punished for not being able to repeatedly push a button fast enough. At any rate I entered a room where I needed to beat everyone in it before the floor gave way. After several attempts I began to get frustrated, when suddenly on one of the restart screens I was asked if I'd like to switch to an easier difficulty.

Now normally I laugh at myself as the game took pity on me, and then defiantly answer "no" as if my wife had suggested we stop at a gas station for directions. But then I realized something. The elements of the game I was actually enjoying were things like story and atmosphere. And while I enjoyed some of the fighting, the thousands of baddies I had brutally murdered so far had somewhat soothed my blood lust. I realized that playing on easy would actually make the game more enjoyable for me, after all I still have God of War 2 left to play! So here's an example where not only I was reminded that I didn't need to play through the game frustrated, but was also able to play the game the way I'd actually prefer to play it at that point. What a clever God that War is!

Another interesting case for level of detail is "Oblivion" (ok, ok, Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion... nerds). This game had something I'd never seen before: a difficulty slider. Accessible at almost any time during the game. Moooore difficult.... Lessssss difficult. Sliders are so fun! So I'm playing the game and I get to a point where I want to silently assassinate someone (always a fun thing to do). I sneak into the house across the street, jump over to their balcony, slip in and stand over their sleeping body with a giant sword in my hand and glint in my eye. I rain my strongest attack down on their head and... they get up and call the guard? Now I was still able to kill them (I know you were worried), but I was very unsatisfied with the result. In my mind this game was fairly life-like on the tone scale (other than the magic, and maybe the vampires). This was not a giant Ogre wearing sword repellent, so in my mind, when one attempts to lop another's head off with a sword while they're sleeping, one generally succeeds. So what did I do? I snuck in, lowered the difficutly, lopped his head off, and then raised the difficulty back up. AMAZING. It was as if I had an argument with the designer, and won! As if he listened to my plight, installed a fix and I was able to continue playing the game I wanted to play. What would have been a frustrating complaint turned into a paragraph about a cool feature.

Now some might say that in doing this, you allow players to play the game in unintended ways, and this is a valid point. Someone may crank the difficulty down, and then forget to raise it up as they get better. This could cause them to miss out on some of the "tension" of exploring caves because they know they can't get hurt. I feel this is somewhat acceptable. The player knows how they want to play, and if my wife hadn't been able to crank down the difficulty I'm guessing she would've given up on the game (she also enjoyed exploring more than fighting anyway). However, there may be a way to have your cake and eat it too. What if you combined this with what "God of War" did? What if you remind players that they can raise the difficulty level if they haven't even come close to having a formidable battle? Many times a player would take such suggestions, they simply forget about these options and sometimes end up putting the controller down instead, because they don't know why they're not enjoying the game anymore.

More talk, less do!

OK, so at some point I'll get back to talking game development, but until then I thought I'd post another link! Chatterbox is a game industry talk show that covers the gambit: from boobs to how distributed "cloud" networks could affect gaming. I ran into Ara (one of the hosts who works at a game company I used to work at) at GDC, and I gave it a listen, pretty cool stuff.

It’s an Indie world

So as I make an independent game, and target Xbox Live Arcade and/or Community Games, I find myself getting more into the “Indie” vibe. I’m hoping this will kind of be like turning into a dirty, dirty hippie, but if not at least I’ve saved money on soap for the last week. Anyway, here are some sites I’ve found that get the Misfits coolness award because they review Xbox Community Games, which so far all the major game sites don’t seem to have the time for.

XNA Roundup: Video! This is a video blog that covers a game or two in depth each week.

XNPlay: This site reviews EVERY game on community games as far as I can tell. That's some dedication!

You've been branded (Business)

So first you decide to make business cards because GDC is next week, then you realize you need a graphic of some sort on it, and eventually if you’re not careful this all leads to you dealing crack on the corner. Here are some ideas we had that we feel will work for either direction the company takes: making games or dealing crack:

Interweaving gameplay mechanics (Design)

When I first envisioned the circuit game I started with the simple notion of energizing a circuit by turning its parts, or "tiles" to allow energy to flow (paradox 3000 is the most recent example I can think of). I then thought that perhaps once the circuit was energized, the grid formed by the edges of the circuit's tiles could glow to become prominent in the foreground, and then you could navigate a character along that grid, avoiding enemies, and making your way to the next circuit. Thus you're solution of one problem would lead to the starting point of another.

Now many games interweave various gameplay mechanics to various degrees of success. In some cases the gameplay mechanics complement one another and are both a major component of the game, such as the dungeons in Zelda where a mix of puzzle solving and action just feels right, culminating in a boss battle that exemplifies this balance by making you have to figure out a strategy for how to defeat the boss (puzzle), and then execute on that strategy (action).
In other cases the second gameplay mechanic might be very different, but limited to a small portion of the game. Usually this is a task, such as unlocking a door. These are usually dubbed as "mini-games" since they're almost like separate little games inside of the main game. The "hacking" that you do in bio-shock is a good example of this, where the main game is first person shooter and the mini-game is a type of connection puzzle. I feel that usually work well because they can serve as an opportunity to break up gameplay, preventing monotony without the risk of annoying the player that dislikes the mini-game, because either you’re not forced to do it (in bio-shock you don't HAVE to hack bots), or if you are you don't have to deal with it too often.

Things seem to get murkier when the gameplay is both different AND a major part of the game. People can be divided on this and while sometimes it's the fault of bad implementation and balance, sometimes it may just come down the player’s tastes. I thoroughly enjoyed ActRaiser (c’mon people let’s take a walk back to super Nintendo). In this game you play as a God (a familiar setting to me) where you go down to earth to clear some demons from a land (side scrolling action). Then when you clear that land you build it up with followers sim-city style (god game). Throughout the game you go back and forth between these modes. I feel they did a good job implementing these mechanics since they made the switching between them predictable and instigated by the player. It wasn't that I was constantly being thrown back and forth between modes, when I felt I was ready to take on a new land, I knew I'd be playing an action game, so if I didn't feel like that at the moment, I could continue to build a previous area.
However, had I hated either side scrolling action or top down god games, I might not have liked the game. I recall reading a review for Call of Juarez, a game in which you alternate between playing a pistol packing preacher (guns blazing) and a bow and arrow yielding drifter (stealth). In it the reviewer complained that he (bias or not) enjoyed one experience much more than the other, and as such felt as though he had to trudge through half of the game that he didn't like to play the half he did.

So I guess, like many things, there are pluses and minuses to how greatly and how often you vary gameplay mechanics. As for me I decided not to go with interweaving the gameplay. I integrated the two mechanics into one gameplay style, and when I came up with another I added it as a separate gameplay mode. I felt that in my case it worked better that way and it made it so I didn't constantly have to worry about balancing the two against each other. But someday I'd love to give something that does mix it up between two gameplay mechanics a try.

Gots me some projects

I put up some descriptions of the games I'm making. Dunno why, I just did. (You can also go to the "Current Projects" link on the sidebar).

Blogz r fun

I guess I'm setting this blog up, partially because I like to hear myself talk (I talk while I type, it's really annoying the other people on this plane), but mostly it's because I'd like to get more info out there for other small game companies. I'm planning on documenting the various aspects of creating a small studio, and more importatnly, some small games. I'll attempt to break things up into categories using labels (design, art, programming, etc.). Hopefully I can add to the collective knowledge of small game development with my fumblings, or worst case, I get to tell cute chicks at a bar that I have a blog about game development. I'm just saying it's AN angle.